Traditionally, when a business or organization wanted to gauge the sentiments of a group of customers or other persons, the organization would take a survey of the group. However, conducting a proper survey is resource intensive, and consequently not at all inexpensive. Moreover, survey use can be limited by practicality and policy. For example, many organizations prohibit its use or permit only a limited use so as to prevent annoyance to its people. Even if not limited however, survey overuse can reduce the accuracy and usefulness of each survey as the survey participants reach overload. Additionally, survey participants may be disinclined to report true results and may skew or inflate responses.
To address the shortcomings of surveying systems, sentiment assessment systems have been proposed to scan and analyze newsfeeds and blogs. However, there is little analysis in such systems beyond determining an overall trend of the content of the newsfeed or blog.
The approaches described in this background section could be pursued, but are not necessarily approaches that have been previously conceived or pursued. Therefore, unless otherwise indicated herein, the approaches described in this background section are not prior art to the claims in this application and are not admitted to be prior art by inclusion in this background section.